Conversation with dead people
by Morgane
Summary: The nights are hers, even now, even after all these years. The nights with its bloody rain and its overwhelming smell of white plums and whirling crimson snow are hers, now and forever." KT, nominated for the RK Awards 2002


DISCLAIMER:  
If I told you that I owned RurouKen, would you actually believe me?  
  
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Well, here are two things I'd like you to know before reading this fic:   
First and most important: I am no native speaker, so if you find some mistakes, please feel free to keep them =^_^=  
  
The other thing is that this fic is rather dark and shows my dislike of one certain character very clearly so that I don't expect K/K fans to like this very much (or at all...). I'm not even sure if Tomoe-fans will like this - hell, I'm not sure if ANYONE will like it, but please give it a try nevertheless and let me know your opinion ^^  
  
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~~ CONVERSATION WITH DEAD PEOPLE ~~  
  
You were my first love  
The earth moving under me  
Bedroom scent, beauty ardent,  
Distant shiver, heaven sent  
  
I'm the snow on your lips   
The freezing taste, the silvery sip  
I'm the breath on your hair  
The endless nightmare, devil's lair  
  
Barely cold in her grave  
Barely warm in my bed  
Setting for a drawn tonight  
Puppet girl, your strings are mine  
  
(~ Nightwish: "Feel for you" from their album Century Child - have I mentioned that I've seen them live when they were in Cologne this autumn ^^)  
  
  
The days are mine, the sun, the easy laughter and the breathtaking pure colour of the sky. But the nights are hers, even now, even after all these years. The nights with its bloody rain and its overwhelming smell of white plums and whirling crimson snow are hers, now and forever.  
  
Nothing has changed since that darkest of days when I lost her. I only have to close my eyes, just for a second, just for a the shortest of times and she stands right before me and looks straight in my eyes, her purple shawl casually around her bare shoulders.  
  
The same girl, as beautiful and mysterious as she was the night she first crossed my path in the bloody rain, all dark waves and seastorm eyes covered under the longest and thickest lashes I have ever seen in my life.  
  
Feeling the memories rushing over me, I wait for that familiar constriction around my heart, this old mixture of relief, affection, love and bitterness I always feel when meeting her in my dreams and naturally enough it comes with a crush so painful that it could scream my lungs out.  
  
(Let's live together. I don't know how long it will last, but...it doesn't have to be for show. Together...till death us part.)  
  
I want her, oh God, I want her back so bad, and part of me will always ache for soft black curls and the overwhelming smell of white plums, ache for the knowledge that all my sins would remain bound up forevermore in these endless pools of black night which are staring at me without showing any emotions in this very moment. I want her back, want to feel her naked body pressed against me again, to feel her curves and bones and flesh fitting together perfectly with mine, I want the last fifteen years to dissipate like dust in the wind.   
  
But then I'm not totally naive. I know what it means to agree to this meeting, I know that I must expect bruises inside and out. It was always the way with her and me.  
  
Please, a part of me wants to beg her, please, can't you just go away before you break me again, please, don't you understand that it's been too long and I've barely learned to live with the scars you gave so nonchalantly to my body and my soul? Please go away, Tomoe. It's barely standable by now, don't destroy this little bit of security I have gained over the years.   
  
Oh, but I'm weak, and I'm so goddam lonely, and I want someone who really knows me, not like that girl who thinks she's in love with me when she does not know anything at all. I want somebody who understands me truly, who sees my bleeding black heart and who does not condemn me for it - and this feline beauty knows all my sins better than even I myself.   
  
We are gone with the sin, both of us, we are siblings in darkness, in guilt, in misery. In every thinkable aspects we are equals.  
  
And she can see that, as clearly as she sees the ever-present blood on my hands, Kaoru and the other miss. And that's why I don't step back when her eyes ask me to approach her. That´s why I agree to this meeting like I always agree. She wants me back, and I'll go, because I don't know any better and can't help it.  
  
"Tomoe", I greet her calmly.  
  
"Kenshin", she returns without the tiniest hint of a smile.  
  
And all of a sudden we are back in Kyoto, back in a time when the only rain the city knew was of a crimson colour. The familiar scent fills my lungs although it is not half as strong as the white plums.  
  
(White plums. It's a sensitive smell. I'm surprised a hitokiri like you knows about this, Himura.)   
  
Slowly I look around myself, drowning in the memory.  
  
(You caused it. You caused the rain to bleed.)  
  
A sudden scream pierces the air, full of despair and heart-crushing grief, but I don't mind and neither does she. Death and pain are things we both know very well for living close to them all the time, things that do not impress us much. Instead I focus on her. "What do you want?"  
  
She shakes her head so that her long hair flows around her head and for one moment I ache to reach out and touch it. "The dead have no desires", she tells me quietly, her voice as sad and melodic as I remember it to be. Never again heard a beautiful voice more beautiful than Tomoe´s. "The question you should ask is what *you* want."  
  
I raise an eyebrow, suddenly understanding where this will lead to. Nevertheless I play the innocent. "So?"  
  
A cold smile graces her lips for a mere instant. "You were never good at this game, Kenshin. Don't try me now."  
  
I forgot how well she knows me. Not like Kaoru or the others, not a bit. This one here will look behind the facade the world falls for so easily. This one will always see the bitter truth.   
  
Sighing I let my mask fall. "Is it about my proposal to Kaoru?"  
  
"Very insightful, anata."  
  
As I do not respond anything, she leans forward, an unreadable expression on her features. "Be honest, Kenshin, do you love this child?"  
  
Do I...?  
  
Suddenly I feel so weary. "Love?" I reply tired. "What's love, Tomoe? What was love for the two of us but bloody rain and crimson snow? You and me, we know that love is blood -- blood screaming inside you to work its will. Kaoru knows nothing of blood."  
  
A seductive little smile appears around her lips, but she does not respond anything, just waits for me to continue. And so I do.  
  
"She's a child. A cheerful, lovely, trustful child, nothing more. But she needs me and that's enough for me."  
  
She eyes me intently. "Really?"  
  
"It has to be enough."  
  
As she just eyes me with plain disbelief in her eyes, I feel a painful mixture of fury and frustration rising inside me. Like always she demands to know the unadorned truth about the things that interest her without a thought of what may befallen me, like always there is something violently disregarding about it and I just wonder how it comes that she can make me feel this way even after all that has happened between us, even after all these years.   
  
"What's your problem anyway?" I suddenly hiss at her without any warning. "Why did you come out of hell-or-wherever-you-got-to this night? Are you afraid that I could learn to bleed for someone else?!"   
  
She just smiles coldly in return. "We both know that I have no reason to do so. You're still in the dark with me."  
  
"That is not true!" Even I myself can hear the uncertainty in my voice. Nevertheless I don't want to admit that she is right - not in front of her and especially not in front of myself.   
  
"You want me because we're the same," Tomoe insists in her usual quiet way that is so much crueler than other people's screaming and angry outbursts, "You need the darkness. You're addicted to it."  
  
"I don't..", I begin but don't finish the sentence, knowing that her cool merciless stare sees my growing need for her just too clearly, my need for that thing which I see in her, but which I cannot name.  
  
But I can't help it.  
She's so beautiful.   
  
Beautiful like something I would have written a poem about, if life would have allowed me to become a poet and not that bloodstained hitokiri I have to face in the mirror every morning. So beautiful even when she tortures me the way only she is capable of. Never knew anyone who could torture you with words just half as well as Tomoe.   
  
(I don't see how killing people can make anyone happy. At least I can see that it does not grant *you* much happiness.)  
  
Unwillingly I shake my head. "I made my mind up. I will marry Kaoru, no matter what. I will do it because she would be all alone without me and you should know better than anyone else that I've already caused too many woman to be without their beloved ones."  
  
I don't know if she recognizes the side blow, for she does not respond to it, but only eyes me interested. "Poor anata, such a desire to atone." Her voice sounds silken all of a sudden, silken and seductive like a siren's deadly song. Still looking at me profoundly, the ghost of a smile appears on her crimson lips. "Do you really expect me to fall for this charade? Or do you actually believe your babbling yourself?"  
  
"I don't know what you are speaking about."  
  
I bloody well do.  
  
Her expression is profoundly cool by now. "Oh no? Then do you really think that you became another person over the years and that you are not any longer the man who causes the rain to bleed?" She shakes her head in fake unbelief. "I will tell you something, my darling, you are still the same man with the same capacity for cruelty. The only difference between the demon of the Bakumatsu and the ´hero´ I see before me, is that you regret. And you choose to marry Kamiya Kaoru because she pities you for it."  
  
(Times change. Even kenjutsu will change. But people don't change. That doesn't happen)   
  
"That's not...", I begin but my voice trails off.  
  
I forgot how well she knows me. That I cannot hide anything from her.  
  
"Yes, she pities you", she continues without mercy. "Pities you because she doesn't know you, doesn't know you at all. This innocent little girl considers you light and you try to convince yourself that she is right."  
  
For a moment there is silence between us. Silence and nothing but the beauty of her eyes.  
  
"Maybe", I finally reply after a while, surprising even myself with the amount of weariness in my voice. "But can you blame me for my decision? We all have our scars."  
  
I don't know if I smile resigned when she tenderly touches the cross scar on my left cheek with fingers colder than ice itself. I probably do. "Not all of them heal." The mockery has vanished out of her eyes, having left nothing back but the deep sympathy and understanding we have always shared.   
  
"Tomoe..."  
  
"You are still my Kenshin", she states calmly more for herself than for my sake. "You will always be in the dark with me."  
  
And I can't reply anything. Can't reply because I know that she is right and because she knows that I know. I will be forever hers and no new friends, no new wife will ever change that fact. I am hers forever and do you want to know what, I don't care, I can't wait to bleed for her again. Maybe the pain will make me able to forget for ten minutes running.   
  
(I don't smell blood anymore. Only your white plum scent)  
  
She reminds me so much of what I really am.  
  
Closing my eyes wearily, I finally follow my long hidden desire and let my fingers trail through the dark silk of her hair. Yes, she is right, I need the darkness...I desperately need it because for so long it was what sustained me. Because the light is so much scarier. The light never really wins...it cares way too much.  
  
I can see a beautiful yet unreadable smiles gracing her lips before they touch my own, to finally fulfill my craving.  
  
And I'm whole again.   
  
Whole when her lips caress the cross scar on my cheek, the very symbol of our life together, whole when she traces her hands over my chest, and then laves tenderly at my throat, covers my lips with her own and stifles my deep sigh. Whole when I see our clothing fall to the floor and when she makes me scream her name so loudly that it must be heard down in heaven and in hell.  
  
One last time, I tell myself like an addictive, knowing that it won't be the last time, that she is right and I will forever be in the darkness with her.  
  
(I'm destined to stay with you, no matter what)  
(Stole my happiness...gave me another happiness...)  
(The heat will kill them)  
  
Whole again. Whole because the iris is the only flower which stands most beautiful in the rain. This girl belongs to me, to my darkness, to the bloody rain that will always be an essential part of me. Not like Kaoru. That one with its innocence and its ideals belongs to sunny daytime. And that's why she will never ever understand, and why she can't have me. Why I will always prefer conversations with dead people over her.  
  
(It's a little lonely, but that's how it is)  
  
  
  
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Before you review (and I hope that you do so!!), please note that this fic isn´t meant as an affront against Kaoru-fans. I know that many people like her and I totally respect that. I just beg you to respect the fact that I utterly despite her, too. 


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